


Every Time A Bell Rings

by Kari_Kurofai



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-21
Updated: 2011-11-21
Packaged: 2017-10-26 09:14:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/281308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kari_Kurofai/pseuds/Kari_Kurofai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every time Dean looks up, looks away from her and around at the almost empty Roadhouse, Pamela watches his eyes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Every Time A Bell Rings

**Every Time A Bell Rings**

 **Inspired by[THIS PICTURE HERE.](http://euclase-spn.tumblr.com/post/10961525312/and-all-that-you-see-digital-painting-ps) Spoilers for 7x02.**

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**

Every time Dean looks up, looks away from her and around at the almost empty Roadhouse, Pamela watches his eyes. She watches the way he searches the room, every chair and every table. He searches the faces of the few hunters that gather there, even in Heaven, and every time the little bell over the door rings he looks up with so much hope in his eyes it makes her heart break a little for him. Every time the bell rings the hope dims, just a bit, but it never fades. 

“What are you waiting for?” she asks after she finds his gaze wandering again. When he doesn’t answer Pamela kicks his legs under the table. 

“Huh?” Dean doesn’t even glance at her, his eyes skimming the faces of the people around the bar. He takes a moment to smile at Jo, and then at Ash in turn when the other man waves to him when he catches his eye. 

Pamela sighs and folds her arms across the table in front of her. “You’re waiting for something,” she repeats slowly, this time making sure Dean is listening to her. 

Dean’s easy smile twists into a frown. It’s a gradual change, so small Pamela barely notices it because the smile it replaces was so transparent to begin with. “Nothing,” Dean mutters into his can of beer as he takes a long swig of it. “I’m not waiting for anything.”

“If you want to see Sam he’s over in that self proclaimed Candy Land monstrosity two Heavens down.”

“Yeah, I know. I dropped him off there this morning and told Gabriel I wanted him back in one, sane, human piece by tonight.” Dean shrugged. “It’s nothing, okay?”

Pamela snorted, “You’re so full off shit.” But she drops it because she knows if she pushes much further that he’ll leave, and that’s the last thing she wants. 

So she watches him instead. She watches as his eyes turn away every time the bell rings and the door opens, watches the way he fingers the amulet around his neck when he talks, watches the way he touches his left shoulder every once in awhile in such an absentminded way even he doesn’t notice he’s doing it. She watches and wonders what he’s missing, who he’s missing, and she wishes she knew how to fix it.

The most she ever gets in reply, after days and weeks start to drag into months (though she can’t even be sure where days end, in Heaven), is a dull and broken, “He was supposed to be here.”

Pamela spends a lot of nights at the Roadhouse helping Ash and Jo wipe down the bar and the tables, clean the used dishes, and clean up the messes the hunter’s leave behind. It’s during one of these moments, when Ash and Jo get a little too tipsy to really be of help and start dancing around by the pool table, that Pamela meets Chuck. Officially at least. She’s seen him once or twice before, hovering near the bar with a beer in hand in the late hours of the night after Dean and Sam leave, later even than how long Gabriel or Andy stay (Which is usually near three in the morning.)

“No last calls or not,” Pamela says coolly, “You’re in the way.” She smiles as Chuck lifts up his glass so she can continue to wipe down the counter. “You’re some sort of authority around here, right?” she asks when she catches him staring. 

“Nobody important,” Chuck laughs softly. “Just a writer.”

“Writers are the gods of their own little worlds, the molders of universes and the puppeteers of their characters.” She narrows his eyes at him while he sips his drink. “Can you write something? For me?”

“I can,” Chuck says over the rim of his glass.

“Write that door,” she points to the entrance to the Roadhouse, “Opening. Write the bell ringing and Dean looking up for the last time because the person he’s been waiting for ever since he got here, finally,  _finally_  walks through it. If you don’t, he’ll wait forever.”

Chuck stares at her for a moment, open mouthed, before he smiles down at his drink. “Heaven isn’t supposed to be for waiting.”

“No, it isn’t,” she agrees. 

Nearly a week passes and Dean still looks up every time the door opens and the little bell rings, still gets that spark of hope in his eyes that dies just as soon as it’s ignited. Every time she sees that spark flicker out, Pamela swears to punch Chuck in the face if he ever sets foot in the Roadhouse again. 

She thinks it’s a Thursday the last time the bell rings, or as close to a Thursday as it can get in Heaven (after all she lost track of the days long ago). Sam and Gabriel are sitting at the bar on either side of of Adam, shouting, “Drink, drink, drink,” to the boy who will never hit twenty-one as he downs another shot. Dean sits at their usual table with her, laughing at another ridiculously bad joke Andy is telling. For the first time since he died, he almost doesn’t look up when the little bell above the door rings. 

But the sound still reaches his ears all the same, the soft, tinkling sound of the bell, and he looks up, still smiling and laughing.

Pamela watches him freeze. His fingers clench around the can of beer in his hand as he lowers it to the table, his eyes wide and his mouth half open.

“Cas.”

Following his gaze, Pamela catches sight of the man standing in the doorway. He leans heavily against it, his tie askew over his soaking wet dress shirt that’s dripping onto the floor and his already water logged black pants. She thinks she’s seen him before, somewhere, but at the moment she really doesn’t care to remember. All that matters is the look on Dean’s face, the hope that doesn’t die this time.

When Dean gets up his movements are slow, hesitant, as if he’s afraid that each step will send him falling out of a dream and into reality. But he makes it to the door, makes it to Castiel, and grabs him by the front of his shirt.

“Hello, Dean,” Castiel whispers.

“You’re soaking wet.”

Castiel blinks, “I … Walked into a lake?” It comes out as a question that even he seems confused about and Dean laughs, loud and openly. It’s the first real laugh Pamela’s heard from him since he came here. “I also seem to have lost my overcoat,” Castiel adds once Dean takes a breather.

“That’s fine, I have it.” Dean smiles the smallest, purest of smiles, before he pulls Castiel to him, hugging the other tight to him. 

“Perfect endings,” Pamela says to herself. “That’s what writers and gods are for.”

  



End file.
